SCEA's World Tour Soccer represents their continuing attempt to battle the likes of the Winning Eleven and FIFA series. While the World Tour series isn't terrible, it's always been somewhat average at best and far below the standards set by the competition. Since their accomplishments on the PS2 have been somewhat lacklustre, the World Tour Soccer team has decided to bring the series to the PSP. The handheld version offers good graphics as well as infrastructure multiplayer, but the amount of flaws is hard to ignore.

World Tour Soccer doesn't really have much of a career mode. The closest thing to it is called the World Tour mode where players participate in different matches on various continents. Clearing one continent (by beating various teams) is required to move on to the next one and the process basically repeats from there. There isn't a whole lot of customization available either and nowhere near the amount of detail a career mode in FIFA or Winning Eleven would offer. It's mostly just a thin pretext to keep you playing the game and winning trophies but it offers little to no extra features besides the standard exhibition match.

The game also has a Play Now mode that seems designed to throw players into the game as quickly as possible. The problem with that is that teams are selected randomly and there is also a 15 second rule that seems impossible to turn off. The game will give you 15 seconds to score once you obtain the ball, which is almost impossible to pull off unless you just run with one player to the end of the field and try to score instead of passing the ball. It's a ridiculous rule that really makes the game frustrating instead of fun. This seems to be the only game out there where it may actually be a good idea to let the other team get the ball instead of just trying to dribble and pass towards the goal.

Other than Play Now, the game also has a Medal mode, which just consists of different challenges, such as passing the ball to all team-mates before scoring, or starting the game with fewer players than the opposition. They work mostly as "achievements" but they really don't add much to gameplay. Adding a whole mode for achievements instead of just incorporating them into a proper career mode is simply poor design on the part of the developers.

The game's exhibition mode is pretty much a standard match with a variety of options thrown in. Players can choose their teams, what Jerseys to use, and then head into the game. A more thorough team management feature is available once the game starts, but it would be far better to have the option of tweaking this before the match. The team management feature lets players change their team lineup, formation, attack, defense, strategy, and the roles of each player in free kick and penalty situations. However, these choices are really bare-bones and give you nowhere near the amount of freedom available in a Winning Eleven game.

While World Tour Soccer 06 does offer up some customization, what it fails to do is give you enough gameplay options. The game does have some special dribbles that are rather simple to perform, but these are more likely to get the ball stolen rather than help in any form. The enemy's AI is also not very good when compared to other soccer games. Stealing the ball from the computer is easy even on the higher difficulties and getting one player to the end of the field, and then going down while dribbling all the defenders seems to be the best course of action. The game does take some measures to avoid your onslaught by making a lot of your point blank shots from close range hit the post, but you'll still come out with a lot of victories either way.

After players get some playtime with the other modes available, they can actually check out Trophy mode and look at the trophies earned. Some trophies may give you access to the movies from different continents right away and is a nice feature to have, although not really gameplay related.

Even with all the different modes available in World Tour Soccer 06, it is still a sub par, average game. The lack of features compared to some of its siblings is truly disappointing, and the gameplay isn't even that interesting. Some of the "features" in the game such as the 15 second rule are just downright frustrating. And the multiplayer, while a nice addition with adhoc and infrastructure modes, is mostly deserted on the North American servers. Unless you're a soccer hooligan who already owns the better soccer games on the PSP, you really shouldn't bother with World Tour Soccer 06.

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